Copy Location in Photos

Is it possible to copy the location from one photograph to another in Photos like we could in iPhoto?

My iPhone captures the location but my Sony camera does not. In the past, with iPhoto, I could copy the location from a photograph with the location to a photograph (taken at the same location) that did not have the location information. I thought Photos was supposed to be updated to allow one to add/copy location.


Using OS X El Capitan version 10.11.5 on an iMac


Thanks for any help you can offer.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jul 9, 2016 2:30 PM

Reply
17 replies

Sep 17, 2016 1:45 AM in response to Lost in Asia

From Apple's Sierra preview: http://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/

User uploaded file

It has still the silly thumbnails instead of pins, and the thumbnails are occluding the names the paces, so we cannot even tell where it is. I hope it will be better than in iOS 10.


On my iPhone, in iOS 10, I cannot pick the key photo that will be shown on the map. Photos is certainly not using the photos I marked as favorites, but looking for photos with people in them. So the maps in Photos iOS 10 are cluttered with thumbnails of my hidden photos with strangers in them that I do not care about.

Jul 10, 2016 9:04 AM in response to debby0514

Hi debby0514,

If when you import pictures from your Sony camera to the Photos app and the location data is not showing or incorrect, the best way to resolve this would be to manually add the location to the pictures once it is in the Photos app. You can do so by following the steps below.


1. Select an incorrectly located picture.
2. Choose Image > Location > Remove Location from the menu bar.
3. Press Command-I to display the picture's info.
4. At the bottom of the Info window, click Assign a Location.
5. Begin typing an address, city, business, or other location name. As you type, auto-fill suggestions will appear. Select the location you want to assign to the picture.
6. Repeat these steps for any picture that has an incorrect location.


Fix incorrect locations in Photos


You can do this with multiple photos at once. Press and hold the Shift key and then select the first photo you'd like to apply the changes to. From there, click on the last picture that you'd like to assign the same location to. Release the Shift key and then right-click on one of the highlighted pictures. Select "Get Info" and follow the steps above to enter the location. This will apply that location to every picture you highlighted.


This should get the desired location on your pictures in no time. Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Have a great day.

Jul 10, 2016 9:09 AM in response to debby0514

Photos in El Capitan lets you add locations by typing the name of a place into the location field of the Info panel.

Select a photo or several photos, open the info panel, then type the name of the place into the location field and adjust the pin for the place on the tiny map.


If you know latitude and longitude you can enter the numerical coordinates instead, the latitude in degrees, then a space character, then the longitude in degrees with a decimal point. This will give you the exact location.


The problem is, that you cannot copy the GPS coordinates from other photos, because Photos is displaying a places name, very summarily, but not the GPS:. To copy the latitude and longitude from other photos use "File > Export" to write the photo to your Desktop, then open the Info panel in the. Finder with "File > Get Info". It will show you the GPS.


I wrote a small Apple Script to copy the coordinates of a selected photo in Photos to the clipboard, so you can copy and paste between photos. See this link: Script: Extract the Numerical GPS Values Using an Apple Script

Jul 29, 2016 11:51 PM in response to J G Low

The pasting added additional line breaks.



I Sierra is an easier way. The maps.app can show latitude and longitude in the Info panel, if you drop a pin. So I would just install the "Show photo on Map" Automator action from this page. https://macosxautomation.com/automator/photos/maps-action.html



The script should look like this:

-- This script will display the GPS values and the altitude for a selected photo in a dialog panel.

-- The coordinates will be copied to the clipboard


on ensure_val(the_value, default_value)


-- if the_value is defined return the value, otherwise the default value

if the_value is equal to "missing value" then

return default_value

else

return the_value

end if

end ensure_val


-- on run {}

tell application "Photos"


activate


set imageSel to (get selection) -- get the selected image


if imageSel is {} then

error "Please select an image."

end if

tell the first item of imageSel

set loc to get the location--retrieve longitude and latitude as list

set lati to (the first item of loc) as string

set longi to (the second item of loc) as string

set alti to get the altitude as string-- retrieve the altitude

end tell


end tell


-- check for undefined values

set lati to ensure_val(lati, "latitude empty")

set longi to ensure_val(longi, "longitude empty")

set alti to ensure_val(alti, "altitude empty")


-- display the result in a dialog panel

set panel_message to "Latitude: " & lati & "

Longitude: " & longi & "

Altitude: " & alti & "


Copied to the clipboard"

display dialogpanel_messagebuttons ¬

"OK" with iconcautiondefault button "OK"


-- copy the GPS data to the clipboard

set clipboard_message to " " & lati & " " & longi & " " & alti

set the clipboard toclipboard_message


return clipboard_message


-- end run

Aug 1, 2016 3:32 AM in response to léonie

Thanks for your generous giving of time and expertise.


I have the script working from Script Editor (after adding a comma after the latitude) but cannot work out how to have the script available within the Photos menu bar.


In iTunes I downloaded some scripts a long while ago and in iTunes I now have a script symbol in the menu bar from which I can directly use the scripts. Is it possible to get the same within Photos for your script?


I have tried internet searches for adding this but surprisingly found nothing useful.

Aug 2, 2016 6:55 AM in response to J G Low

I seem to have sorted this out myself now by tweaking various settings and a bit more research. I will not publish my actions for this as I am not totally sure of which really did the trick. Fortunately all seems to be well and have not had to resort to any TimeMachine restorations 🙂


Also it seems that having a script icon actually in the menu bar of an application is an older system way of doing things as opposed to having a generalised script button on the right side of the menu bar. If scripts are in the Users Script Folder and then in a folder with the name of an application they appear at the top of the list when that application is open.

Sep 16, 2016 2:10 PM in response to J G Low

I've spent a lot of time adding locations to old photos where there was no location recorded.


Often an auto-suggestion will appear which I select. The correct location is then applied, the Info pane is updated, and it all seems fine.


However when I then search for the locations I've selected (using the text of the auto-suggestion) in the search box in the top right, I cannot find the photos. The most matches are when I also have a Description for the photo, but it doesn't seem to be searching by location (note - I search from the master Photos album at the top, as opposed to within an album).


Any idea why this might be happening? Does Photo need time to index the new locations?


Thank you

Sep 16, 2016 11:53 PM in response to Jerry Dammers

Jerry Dammers, note that your question isn't quite the same as the original post, so you may want to make this a new question thread.


Are you never finding any photos by location at all? When I type in the search box in the upper right corner, Photos starts to predict what I want, and also provides categories. For example, if I type "Cana", it'll predict "Canada", with choices for "Country", "Keyword", "Description", "File Name", and so on. If I then select Country, it shows me all photos with a location within Canada. On my computer, that place search is working for the most recent photos added to my library (two days ago?), so I guess the indexing is pretty quick.


When I start typing in the search box, there is sometimes quite a big delay before any predictive text appears (as long as 20 seconds? But my 2009 iMac is getting long in the tooth!). Finding all the photos can also take perhaps 20 seconds or so, if there are a lot of them, but the first ones appear quite quickly.


The search is finding locations both "native" to the photo (i.e. GPS-tagged when the picture was taken), and photos I tagged with a location much later in iPhotos. (I guess it's also finding location tags added in Photos, but I'm not 100% sure if my more recent photos were all GPS-tagged already, or if I added tags later.)


Photos doesn't seem to find specific street addresses - it'll find "Main Street", for example, but not "1010 Main Street." Also, spelling can be something of an issue; I experience annoying problems where Apple's names are spelled quite differently (and inconsistently!) from standard Chinese spellings, or the Japanese spellings that I'd use. Something similar may happen with European languages, but I haven't yet encountered that.


Caveats: I don't use Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library, so perhaps those are a factor.

Sep 17, 2016 12:50 AM in response to Jerry Dammers

An add-on to Lost in Asia's reply: Photos will find the photos by places names, if the name is written as a places marker on the tiny map in the Info panel. It will find the street name, the city name, state, and country name. Sometimes searching with a smart album will find more hits than searching with the search box.


But if I hide a photo, all places information will be suppressed an the photo will be treated like a photo without locations assigned - no map in the info panel, no places name. The photo will still be found by the text, but not by the location info.

Sep 17, 2016 1:12 AM in response to léonie

Sometimes searching with a smart album will find more hits than searching with the search box.

léonie, is there a way to construct a smart album around the place / GPS tag? I can see the "Photo / is, is not / tagged with GPS function", but I can't see a way to search specifically by place. I see that "Text / is / ____" does include the place tag, but that'd also include the description and file name, right?

Sep 17, 2016 1:34 AM in response to léonie

OK, thanks. And yeah, the places view hasn't been that useful to me yet in Photos. I think I've read articles that places become more useful in Sierra - although maybe I'm thinking of iOS 10. I'm trying not to be too optimistic about the possibility of better organizing functions in Sierra, seeing as how I've heard nothing about that, and just about Memories, which often seem to be broken for me anyway because of time zone issues. I'm also hoping that new iMacs come out pretty soon, because mine is getting SLOW (seven years on, I can't feel annoyed about that)!

Sep 18, 2016 5:30 AM in response to léonie

léonie wrote:


Probably the designers thought it sufficient, that we can access the places from the maps in the year, moments, collections view.


I've spent a lot of time recently updating my locations (where no GPS was recorded) and it seems to me there are significant flaws in the search functionality.


The most frustrating is that when accepting the auto suggestion, you cannot then search for that name (only the specific street). I don't always know the actual street address, particularly when I've been on holiday overseas.


For example, I have hundreds of photos at a hotel where the name is in English but the address is in Arabic. Hence, I can't find the hotel when searching as I can't type or understand Arabic! There are even some auto-suggestions that are just the name with no corresponding address so I have no idea where these are in my library.


People are more likely remember (and want to search for) place names, not streets. And as Apple gives you the option of those places names, it's bizarre you can't then search for them. Hence thousands of photos can't be located in my library.


The only photos that I can easily find are when I've just accepted the auto suggestion for a city/town. It doesn't seem to allocate those to a street, hence they are easily findable when searching. But, of course, allocating just a city/town is too vague if you want to properly document where you've been.

Sep 18, 2016 6:02 AM in response to Jerry Dammers

I'm adding the address to the descriptions automatically before importing my photos to Photos. I'm using

JetPhoto Studio for geocoding from track logs. And it can also do reverse geocoding and will look up the GPS coordinates to find the address and write the address into the caption field.

That makes searching in Photos easier because the full address including street, city, state, country will be in the description.

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Copy Location in Photos

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